


Children in Time

by NorthwesternInsanity



Category: Deep Purple, Music RPF
Genre: Angst, Drama, Endings, Gen, Innocence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 06:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16697467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthwesternInsanity/pseuds/NorthwesternInsanity
Summary: Tonight, they'd indeed crossed the line of 'too much', and there was no doubt in his mind that this was that time to stop. But even with his expectations of such a signal, Jon couldn't have fathomed that the feeling would be so intense as what he felt now. [Follow-up to "You Better Bow Your Head"]





	Children in Time

Leaning heavily against the wall of the dressing room beside his roadcase, Jon Lord closed his eyes and heaved a deep breath, trying to clear his mind from the tension and upset of what had taken place onstage before pondering the question in his mind.

It was the same question he and Ian Paice had asked each other just as much as they'd asked themselves for the past month. The same question that had terrified Jon to death to ask for the first time out loud, and had continued to terrify him every time after that. He'd only stopped allowing himself to dance around asking it when the performances began to suffer. When the fun after the show stopped feeling like fun because of whatever would have gone wrong during it. When it was clear it had crossed a line, where they were already hurt, and sooner or later, somebody was apt to get hurt far worse.

He'd continued putting it off. Perhaps, he'd wasted time allowing it to pass rather than acting. But of the two possibilities, he'd stuck to the one, still too frightened of the other. They were all frightened of the other and the uncertainty of it. It felt safer to stay where they were until the time came when they knew they couldn't.

That time would come, and he had hoped that when it did, they would know it so strongly that they would not be able to deny it.

Jon knew in his heart that if the time came before the end of the remaining scheduled shows, he would know it that way, even if no one else did. Tonight, they'd indeed crossed the line of 'too much', and there was no doubt in his mind that this was that time to stop. But even with his expectations of such a signal, Jon couldn't have fathomed that the feeling would be so intense as what he felt now.

As he opened his eyes, Jon felt his head spin, and he had to abort his attempt of taking his weight off the wall in order to stay upright.

Never in his life had he felt so exhausted. The room was spinning, and as he asked that question, the pain and terror he'd felt the night he had faced it head-on with Ian Paice was there, but he hardly blinked at it next to the other option. As he pondered what he felt, what scared him more were the only words he could describe what he felt to himself.

_I can't keep doing this. Not like this. Not anywhere close._ The idea of having to go out on another stage to go off and ask the same question was unbearable. His eyes stung and his head throbbed, and if he was to have an overwhelming feeling to know it was time, this was it. To know that continuing was far more scary than questioning the end.

Coming to terms with the undeniable in his mind, he found the strength to turn his head and look across the dressing room to assess his surroundings.

Paicey sat on the end of the bench in the middle of their shared room together. He was leaning forward, hunched over his lap and propped on the heels of his hands, which were pressed to the edge of the bench on either side of him. His fingers curled around the edge in a death grip that turned his knuckles white with half of his remaining energy, and it was the only reason he had yet to fall over on the floor. The rest of his energy was taken in panting. Long, desperate, wheezing gasps that seized his whole body. His face was mostly obscured by his dampened hair, but his eyes were visibly closed, and his glasses had slid down his nose and slipped off to settle on his feet.

He was pitiful. Everything taken out of him. Jon couldn't help but recall the mere kid who had joined to complete them at the start of it all, and it was hard to believe how much eight years had aged him.

The same kid who had enough medical problems that it was a wonder he wasn't chronically too ill to perform -who never missed a show and powered through every one of them like a trooper even on the occasion he didn't feel well, yet still made self-deprecating comments to describe himself as "miniature and weak" as though his perseverance wasn't enough to override it.

This was the first time Jon had looked at him and seen him as looking truly ill and weak, and another night onstage like this one had been was a battle he had no fair chance of winning. The illness didn't come from within him. It came from being far too strong for far too long, as they both had.

"Ian, that's it, isn't it?"

Paicey looked as though he wanted to speak in agreement, but couldn't summon the air to force it out. He went into a violent fit of coughing as Jon continued.

"If we were waiting for a sign to stop any sooner, this is absolutely the end of this band as far as I'm concerned."

"Y-yes," Paicey whispered.

Jon was blown away by how surreal it felt, officially calling the end. The feeling that it was time was as real as the insane world they lived in, but unlike the hard conversation they'd had a month ago, this was easy. He could ponder it being over without the slightest feeling of grief, and he didn't care. It was over, and he was over it. He wanted it over, and couldn't have it that way fast enough.

"Why are we doing this to ourselves?"

"It's over." Paicey was nearly collapsing with relief now, and Jon staggered over to drop down beside him; to keep him from falling.

"It's over," Jon repeated. "Oh, thank God."

They sat in blissful silence, taking in the sense that the world had been lifted off their backs. The blissful silence in relief that would only stand uninterrupted for mere seconds, before the sound of what seemed like everything crashing down around them returned full-force.

Pounding footsteps paused before the door, which swung open with a clunk as the person pushed it through the jamb before the latch was open all the way. They could hear sobbing before their visitor could emerge around the door. 

David Coverdale. 

He too had been a mere child when Blackmore laid eyes on him and beckoned with the opportunity -snagging David on inescapable fingers, giving no chance of turning back or having second thoughts on the chaotic world which he was dragged into. He'd had to scramble to get his footing; figure out what was expected of him through wide, naive eyes. His talent and charisma allowed him to quickly get there, but it had not been without great agony below the surface. The anxiety he'd suffered on the short term course of weight-loss pills placed him on edge -snippy, emotional, and expecting the worst of everyone. The lingering effect had not left him when the closeness of his friendship with Glenn had been challenged, and the level at which he still cared was only fueling the agony as the band spiraled out of control.

And now that the band had hit bottom and crashed, wrecking David's facade with it, he stood as everything he was underneath -still a boy who had been thrown into a world he was hardly ready for. A child with a heart too innocent to come out of the crash unbroken.

He'd pulled his hair forward to shield himself from the crew he'd passed in the hall. Only the tip of his nose was visible from the side. His eyes were swollen and red-rimmed, his face was tear-streaked, and he hyperventilated so that his shoulders shook, and every word he tried to speak got broken up in syllables with hiccuping in between.

"I c-can't!" he wailed as soon as Jon turned to him. "I'm qu-quit-ing. I can't d-do this a-anym-more. F-find some-one else -or p-pack it in... I d-don't want to be of t-troub-le, but I c-can't do it. I can't c-cope!"

"Well, if it's of any consolation to you..." Paicey had to break off his sentence. He was gaining control, but still breathing too labored to carry on past short, choppy sentences. "...You don't need to worry about leaving us. Or of it being a problem for us. There is no band to quit. We've already called it. Every place we had left is cancelled. As of tonight, it will be. I'll make sure of it."

A wild look overcame David; he gawked with some heart-wrenching expression of shock and torment, right before he dissolved. He hunched over, lifted his forearm to his face, and staggered over to sit down on the bench, where Jon took him in his arms as the shock wore off and his own emotions began stirring inside himself.

"There, there, David," Jon murmured, at loss of how to respond when he was so far past inconsolable. "Bless your heart."

"I'm sorry," David cried, and what he said next might as well have twisted a knife into Jon's heart. "I t-tried; I know I c-could've -I should h-have tried harder and done m-more-"

"Oh, no, you have no reason to be sorry; you did _everything,"_ Jon choked, heaving a heavy sigh at just how much David had done -everything they could have expected of him when he joined, and then so much more to keep them going as long as they had -for him to feel just as he and Paicey had feared he might.

"You did everything."

"Just because this is the end of Deep Purple doesn't mean it's the end of us." Having recovered, Paicey spoke from the other side of Jon, leaning forward to look at David. "There are other things all of us can do, but if we let the end of us come first, that would be the end, regardless of what happened with Purple."

"Ian and I will figure out something; we've got enough experience that we'll be alright." Jon let go of David as he sat up and tried to compose himself. "And you're still young and with a lot of talent; you've got more time than you know to make way for yourself somewhere else."

"I think the others already took their stuff and left," David said finally with control. He sniffled and looked about the room through puffy eyes like a lost child. "So, now what are we do with all of this, and with them?"

Jon stood up, feeling like the lost wanderer he'd been long before Deep Purple when he was a mere child.

_Beneath all we gain and go through, we really are children in time, he mused, right before speaking with just as much uncertainty as he might have in that time._

"We can worry about them later; now is not the time for any of us here to have to go through that."

"Right now, we clean up, pack up, and get ourselves out of here." Paicey's childlike vulnerability had hidden itself away as he slid into emergency mode -the one time he didn't take forever and a day to second-guess everything because there was no time to think and nobody really knew what to think either -and it was his coping mechanism he was clinging to just as a child would to some source of security.

"We'll just take small steps for now. We can worry about figuring out where to go next when we get home."

Small steps. Like those lost children would take.

David stood up with Paicey to join Jon. One by one, they followed each other through the dressing room, picking up their belongings and leaving behind the line between the good and the bad which they'd reached, taking small steps to find the way forward from the battlefield that had gone silent as unspoken surrender ended the fight.


End file.
